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From: "John B. Matthews" <nospam@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Java puzzler
Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 00:28:50 -0400
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In article <alpine.DEB.2.00.1105112141410.27211@urchin.earth.li>,
 Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> wrote:
[...]
> So, would it have been possible to write the language rules such that 
> integer literals have either some sort of indeterminate-length 
> pseudo-type that can be used submissively in all sorts of 
> expressions, or to have small integer literals have type byte, bigger 
> ones type short, and so on?

I'm not sure about Java, but this is standard in Ada. Universal types 
[1] allow an implementation to use such literals as Ada.Numerics.π and 
Ada.Numerics.e [2]. As a consequence, a popular implementation [3] 
depends on mpfr and gmp.

[1]<http://www.adaic.org/resources/add_content/standards/05rm/html/RM-3-4-1.html>
[2]<http://www.adaic.org/resources/add_content/standards/05rm/html/RM-A-5.html>
[3]<http://gcc.gnu.org/>
[4]<http://www.mpfr.org/>

-- 
John B. Matthews
trashgod at gmail dot com
<http://sites.google.com/site/drjohnbmatthews>